Alison 

378 creative works found

• Photoshop CS3 Creative Photographic Techniques with Chris Orwig
  by Alison Johnston

  Photoshop CS3 Creative Photographic Techniques with Chris Orwig I’m about half way through watching this CD, and I have to say that …

  Photoshop CS3 Creative Photographic Techniques with Chris Orwig I’m about half way through watching this CD, and I have to say that it is great. Full of tips, tricks and techniques for the photographer using PS. You can find it at Lynda and I’m suspecting that the link won’t work LOL You can find the contents of the CD Here Chris assumes that you have a working knowledge of Photoshop, and though that would be helpful – having the CD means that you can run the tutorials over and over again. I’m off to watch a couple more tuts now.

• The Russell Brown Show
  by Alison Johnston

  Crazy as a loon, but Russell Brown is a Photoshop Guru, and he has some very nice video tuts on his site. Russell Brown...

  Crazy as a loon, but Russell Brown is a Photoshop Guru, and he has some very nice video tuts on his site. Russell Brown

• Photography Quotes
  by Alison Johnston

  ‘To the complaint, ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, ‘There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.’...

  ‘To the complaint, ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, ‘There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.’ / Ansel Adams (1902 – 1984) I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term - meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching - there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster. / Ansel Adams (1902 – 1984) A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know. / Diane Arbus (1923 – 1971), (1923-1971) Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the ‘ah-ha’. / Ernst Haas, Comment in workshop, 1985 The camera doesn’t make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But, you have to SEE. / Ernst Haas, Comment in workshop, 1985 We try to grab pieces of our lives as they speed past us. Photographs freeze those pieces and help us remember how we were. We don’t know these lost people but if you look around, you’ll find someone just like them. / Gene McSweeney, Grey Water Photography, 06-04-2006 Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. / Henri Cartier Bresson Maybe because it’s entirely an artist’s eye, patience and skill that makes an image and not his tools. / Ken Rockwell, Your Camera Does Not Matter, 2005 No matter how advanced your camera you still need to be responsible for getting it to the right place at the right time and pointing it in the right direction to get the photo you want. / Ken Rockwell, Your Camera Does Not Matter, 2005 The camera’s only job is to get out of the way of making photographs. / Ken Rockwell, Your Camera Does Not Matter, 2005 Your equipment DOES NOT affect the quality of your image. The less time and effort you spend worrying about your equipment the more time and effort you can spend creating great images. The right equipment just makes it easier, faster or more convenient for you to get the results you need. / Ken Rockwell, Your Camera Does Not Matter, 2005 No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen. / Minor White Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people – to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual. / Nickolas Muray Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. / Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum. / Tallulah Bankhead (1903 – 1968)

• Calendar and T-Shirt
  by Alison Johnston

  I purchased a calendar I made and a t-shirt that I made to see what the final products were like. In the case of the t-shirt it was also…

  I purchased a calendar I made and a t-shirt that I made to see what the final products were like. In the case of the t-shirt it was also to check out the sizing and the quality. I’m pretty impressed. There was only one image out of the thirteen that wasn’t quite right, but I’m more aware now of how RB prints images and that can be avoided in the future. The colours in the writing on the tee was pretty darn close to colours I had chosen in photoshop. Next purchase will probably be some cards just to see how they turn out.

• The Creative Digital Darkroom
  by Alison Johnston

  Now here is a book that I can’t wait to get my hands on. For all those who had the privilage of poking around in the chemical world, Kat…

  Now here is a book that I can’t wait to get my hands on. For all those who had the privilage of poking around in the chemical world, Katrin Eismann and Seán Duggan have brought together a book that tries to duplicate the old darkroom effects in Photoshop. THE CREATIVE DIGITAL DARKROOM Anyone who has an interest (as I do) in photo restoration and retouching will know who Katrin Eismann is. Considered one of the leaders in her knowledge of photo restoration using Photoshop. KATRIN EISMANN Must go search Amazon :-)

• Joe McNally: The Moment It Clicks
  by Alison Johnston

  I think this book is due out about 17th Feb – check your local amazon page. There is a short clip at youtube for those who are intereste…

  I think this book is due out about 17th Feb – check your local amazon page. There is a short clip at youtube for those who are interested. Joe McNally: The Moment It Clicks and his blog is at BLOG PORTFOLIO Name: Joe Joe McNally shoots assignments for magazines, ad agencies, & graphic design firms. Clients include Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, National Geographic, Life, Time, Fortune, New York Magazine, GEO, Golf Digest, Discover, Men’s Journal, Business Week, Rolling Stone, New York Stock Exchange, Target, Sony, GE, Nikon, Lehman Brothers, & PNC Bank. In addition to having been a recipient of the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for outstanding magazine photography, McNally has been honored numerous times by several of the following: Communication Arts, Applied Arts, Photo District News, Pictures of the Year, The World Press Photo Foundation, The Art Directors’ Club, American Photo, and Graphis. Joe’s teaching credentials include: the Eddie Adams Workshop, the National Geographic Masters of Contemporary Photography, the Santa Fe Workshops, the Smithsonian Institute Masters of Photography, Rochester Institute of Technology, Maine Photo Workshops, Department of Defense Worldwide Military Workshops, and the Disney Institute. He has also worked on numerous “Day in the Life” projects. One of McNally’s most notable large scale projects, “Faces of Ground Zero – Giant Polaroid Collection”, has become known as one of the most primary and significant artistic responses to the tragedy at the World Trade Center. Joe was described by American Photo magazine as “perhaps the most versatile photojournalist working today” and was listed as one of the 100 most important people in photography. In January 1999, Kodak and Photo District News honored Joe by inducting him into their Legends Online archive. In 2001, Nikon Inc. bestowed upon him a similar honor when he was placed on their website’s prestigious list of photographers noted as “Legends Behind the Lens”.

• Custom Shape Tool Part 1
  by Alison Johnston

  I saw a nifty little trick by Scott Kelby and thought that it might be a useful addition to anyone’s tips and tricks bag. Because I have…

  I saw a nifty little trick by Scott Kelby and thought that it might be a useful addition to anyone’s tips and tricks bag. Because I have the attention span of a gnat, when I was about half way through writing this down, I saw another simple use for the shape tool as well. So, you’re gonna get 2 for the price of 1 ;-) The rule of thirds – yep, I’m saying the rule of thirds in the same sentence as the custom shape tool ….... am I crazy or what! It turns into quite a nifty tool for checking your image and saves getting out the rulers and grids … so lets start. Open your image>duplicate your image>close original. Do all of the work you would normally do in post production, except the cropping. Go to the Shape Tool and pick the Custom Shape Tool from the fly out menu. You’re going to need the info palette open at this stage, which is defaulted with the Histogram and Navigator windows. If it isn’t open go to window>Info and click on that to open your info palette. Look for the 3×3 grid in the shape tool which is located about the 5th row down in the default shapes. Check that you have the shape option highlighted, not the path from shape or fill shape option in the menu bar. In the Geometry options, make sure unconstrained in highlighted. Now you are going to be watching the W_H or width and Height on the right hand lower side of the info window. You will also need to find out what size your final image is going to be. If you’re working on a 300_200 dpi image great, if not you will probably need to adjust that prior to trying out this little trick. You will also need to check if you are going to be viewing the width and height in the info window in “in” or ‘cm’. Okay, now draw out over your image and watch the width and height in the info palette, once the figures you need are there stop drawing. Press enter on the keyboard go grab your move tool until you have your image aligning to a rule of thirds, or don’t enter and go grab your move tool until you have the grid positioned to give you a good rule of thirds. You can now grab your crop tool, place your crop around the grid lines of the custom shape tool and crop. You can then go ahead and delete the custom shape tool layer. I’ll post my next use for the custom shape tool in another entry, cos I’ve just had about several interruptions and I’m way behind :-) Custom Shape Tool Part 2

• Shadow/Highlight Adjustment Layer
  by Alison Johnston

  You’re thinking what a wonderful thing that would be, to have an adjustment layer for the shadow/highlight adjustment feature found under…

  You’re thinking what a wonderful thing that would be, to have an adjustment layer for the shadow/highlight adjustment feature found under Image>adjustment>shadow/highlight. This is a technique specific to PS CS3, but in the future perhaps adobe will make it an adjustment layer in the Layers Palette. Open an image in CS3. Go to image>duplicate and either accept the default (which will be the name of your image with ‘copy’ at the end), or rename to suit. Close the original image. Duplicate the background layer by dragging it to the new layer icon in the layers palette or press Ctrl J on the keyboard (cmmd J on the mac). Right click on the duplicate layer and from the fly out menu click on ‘convert to smart object’ (5th from the top on a PC). Your duplicate layer is now a smart object and you will see a small icon in the bottom right corner of the layer preview image. Go to the top menu bar and select image>adjustments>shadow/highlight. You will notice that the shadow/highlight is the only option available. Select the settings you require and click OK. To re edit the settings of the shadow/highlight adjustment whenever you like, click on the name shadow/highlight which is located below the white ‘smart filters’ box, below your duplicate layer. Voila!

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Beta Learning Centre
  by Alison Johnston

  The Photoshop guys have put up a Learning Centre for Lightroom 2 Beta HERE It is free to b…

  The Photoshop guys have put up a Learning Centre for Lightroom 2 Beta HERE It is free to browse around for another 38 days and then it is only available to NAPP members.

• Last post for a couple of days
  by Alison Johnston

  We are moving house tomorrow, so I’ll be busy all day and hopefully sleeping at the new house tomorrow evening. It will probably take Te…

  We are moving house tomorrow, so I’ll be busy all day and hopefully sleeping at the new house tomorrow evening. It will probably take Telstra a couple of days to type in the code for the broadband to get hooked up though, so I’ll be off line till they do it. See you when I get back online.

• The Power of One
  by Alison Johnston

  The Power Of One Author Unknown One song can spark a moment, / One flower can wake the dream. / One tree can start a forest, / One…

  The Power Of One Author Unknown One song can spark a moment, / One flower can wake the dream. / One tree can start a forest, / One bird can herald spring. One smile begins a friendship, / One handclasp lifts a soul. / One star can guide a ship at sea, / One word can frame the goal. One vote can change a nation, / One sunbeam lights a room. / One candle wipes out darkness, / One laugh will conquer gloom. One step must start each journey, / One word must start each prayer. / One hope will raise our spirits, / One touch can show you care. One voice can speak with wisdom, / One heart can know what’s true. / One life can make the difference, / You see, IT’S UP TO YOU!

• Warp Tool
  by Alison Johnston

  This is just a fun tutorial and if you’ve used Photoshop for any length of time you’ll already know you can do this. It’s a bit like the…

  This is just a fun tutorial and if you’ve used Photoshop for any length of time you’ll already know you can do this. It’s a bit like the magnetic pen tool, you know it’s there but rarely use it. I’m going to show you how to do this with a custom shape, but you could make your own shape with the pen tool or one of the marquee tools. You could also use a clipping mask to clip an image inside of the shape. Just use your imagination. Create a new file 800×600 @72dpi and fill it with white. Click on the shape tool and choose custom shape or you can press U on the keyboard and if the custom shape doesn’t come up, hold down the shift key and press the U key until it does. I’ve chosen the Eighth Notes shape. Making sure the foreground colour isn’t white, draw out the shape making sure that shape layers is selected on the top toolbar. Make sure the shape Layer is selected by clicking on it and then press Ctrl + T on your keyboard and right click inside the transform area and choose warp from the fly out menu – or you can go to Edit>Transform>Warp. Reference the image below and look at the right hand side of the top toolbar, you will see a small icon and if you hover your cursor over it, it will read – Switch between free transform and warp – looking to the left hand side ot the toolbar, click the small icon until Custom is showing. Click through for the larger image. Click on the arrow next to Custom to open the drop down menu. This menu will look familiar to you from the Type Tool. Go ahead and choose one of the effects from the menu. I chose Fisheye in the example below. Notice the small square shape on the grid – if you click and drag this with the mouse it will change the effect without you having to type in the numbers in the top toolbar, although you can type the numbers in if you want. Use the Tick on the top toolbar (right hand side) to accept the transform, or press enter on the keyboard. I’ve used the elliptical marquee in the example below and chose Fish from the Custom Menu. I added a stroke to the shape then I’ve added some type and used Transform>Distort. I then added another shape and used Wave from the Custom menu. Have some fun with it – you can come up with some weird and whacky effects :-)

• Perceptual Experiment
  by Alison Johnston

  Perceptual Experiment Can You Count the Correct Number of Ball Passes? Join the Experiment HERE...

  Perceptual Experiment Can You Count the Correct Number of Ball Passes? Join the Experiment HERE This is part of Transformation and Fluid Intelligence

• CS4 Superguide
  by Alison Johnston

  Head on over to photoshopcafe and grab your free CS4 Superguide

  Head on over to photoshopcafe and grab your free CS4 Superguide

• Create A Realistic Shallow Depth Of Field In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  Sometimes we get it all wrong don’t we ? You’ve just taken the most fabulous image of great aunt bertha and when you upload it your comp…

  Sometimes we get it all wrong don’t we ? You’ve just taken the most fabulous image of great aunt bertha and when you upload it your computer ….. yikes …. wrong F Stop, wrong everything and that terrific image has no shallow depth of field. What to do ….... we could go and blur the heck out of it with Gaussian Blur and hope that no one notices that it doesn’t really mimic that made in the camera – or, you could carry on reading this tutorial :-) The start image is brought us by cyborg1us over at Stock Exchange. Click through for the larger image. I’ve also got 2 images (below) for you to look at. Both images have had too much of the filter applied to them. The first image is the Gaussian Blur, the second image is the other blurring effect you are going to do here. Gaussian Blur The Other Blur While both of them look really terrible because I have over done the effect, the second image holds more of what was originally there. Whilst it is blurred, the edges around the leaves, highlights etc., remain sharper and more accurately represent a shallow depth of field created in camera. Creating this effect is really simple, where it will get a little tougher is extracting a person or people that you want to keep tack sharp. But we’ll have a look at doing that and a way to avoid the fringing/haloing that will more than likely occur from the blur effect on the layer below. Open the image and duplicate it twice by either dragging it to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette or pressing Ctrl + J on the keyboard. Name the first duplicate layer Gaussian and the second one Shape. Turn off the Shape Layer and working on the Gaussian filter go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and choose a radius of 5 pixels (on this particular image). In the image below I have selected an area to show you that using Gaussian Blur makes the ‘whites/highlights’ in the image go a little gray coloured. Turn on the Shape Layer (image will revert to the original look) and go to Filter>Blur>Shape Blur choose the Hexagon Shape and set the radius to 5 pixels, click OK to accept. Notice in the image below how the whites/highlights have not turned a gray colour and that even though the leaves have been blurred, and unlike the Gaussian Blur filter, have retained some of their edge sharpness. As a quick aside to this tutorial, with the shape blur done, change the blend mode to darken and you’ll end up with quite a nice porcelain type effect on the image. Back to the tut. Right, you’re more than likely to have great aunt bertha in the image and I haven’t got anyone in mine :-( so I’m going to add a shape to the b/ground and pretend I have extracted it, even though I’ve only duplicated it and I’m going to change the colour of the duplicated shape to white so I can show you something and how to fix it. With your subject/s selected press Ctrl + J on the keyboard to isolate them to a new layer. Click back on the b/ground layer, and if you haven’t already, double click on it to make it an active layer and accept the default name of Layer 0 or give it a name of your choice. Working on this layer go to Filter>Blur>Shape Blur and do the same as you did earlier. There is a huge possibility that you are going to end up with some haloing from blurring this layer. See image. So, how can you go about making sure this doesn’t happen – actually, it’s a lot easier than you would expect. Turn of the top layer and working on the b/ground layer – please make sure that you are not working on the original image. Hopefully when you opened the original image you immediately duplicated it and then closed the original – we are going to do a little bit of cloning on the this layer so that the haloing is not visible. Go grab your Clone Stamp Tool and you are going to go around the people/objects etc., that you have selected to remain sharp and clone some of the outside (that which you will eventually blur) into the selected object. You don’t have to get too perfect with the cloning, as it will be blurred anyway. See image. Once you have finished the cloning, turn back on the layer with your selection and any haloing will have gone :-) I’ve gone ahead and given my great aunt bertha a bevel and emboss and a pattern overlay :-) Experiment with other Shapes, Blend Modes and Layer Opacity to see if you can come up with something else.

• 

  RedBubble Logo Challenge
  by Alison Johnston

• Working with JPEGS in Camera RAW (ACR)
  by Alison Johnston

  No screenshots with this tutorial, just a handy little tip. With Camera RAW 5 came the ability to open single jpegs in ACR – which is gr…

  No screenshots with this tutorial, just a handy little tip. With Camera RAW 5 came the ability to open single jpegs in ACR – which is great news, but there is something not available to you with a jpeg that is available with a RAW file – the different preset white balances. With a RAW file you get a little drop down menu for the white balance. Auto / Daylight / Cloudy / Shade / Tungsten / Fluroescent / Flash / Custom Now, how can you make these same settings available so you can use them with a jpeg file, pretty easily as it turns out. You will need one RAW file to make this work (and it little bit of time) Open the RAW file in ACR and then go the drop down menu and click on Daylight (example) Save this as a Preset – you might call it something like Daylight for jpeg. Click on Cloudy next and then save it as a preset, continue on till you have done all the white balances. When you open a jpeg file in ACR, go to your presets folder and try out one the new white balance presets you made :-)

• Sales of Prints
  by coppertrees

  You put warm smiles in my Heart..and Today I needed them…...........

  Sales

• Very Quick Colour Correction Using photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  Perhaps one of the most used colour correction techniques is using the individual channels in a levels adjustment layer. It isn’t going …

  Perhaps one of the most used colour correction techniques is using the individual channels in a levels adjustment layer. It isn’t going to work with every image, but it can put your image in a good place to use further adjustments …. and simple! ... you gotta love simple :) The practise image is brought to us by Arif Imam over at StockExchange, you can find it HERE I have resized the image. Add a levels adjustment layer by clicking on the ‘create new fill or adjustment layer’ icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Choose levels. From the Channel drop down menu choose ‘Red’ and referencing the image below, bring the white slider in the where the majority of the information is. Go to the drop down menu again and choose ‘Green’ Use the white slider again to bring it to where the majority of the information is. Reference image below. Choose blue from the drop down menu and again, slide the white slider to where the majority of the information is. Reference image below. Go back to the composite view (RGB) in the drop down menu and you can fiddle around with the sliders if you like. I took the middle slider and pushed it to 1.10 You can see that the highlight is quite blown out so you would have to go ahead and fix that – but not a bad result for a couple of seconds work. You could also adjust the sliders in each of the individual channels to get a different result. I went ahead and duplicated the layer, then went to Image>Adjustments>Shadow/Highlight and used the folloing settings – see image below. You can see how that brought out some detail in his shirt and jacket. Then I added a black mask (hide all) by holding down the Alt key before clicking on the ‘add layer mask’ icon at the bottom of the layers palette. I grabbed a white, soft edged brush and brought back the man, shirt and jacket. You could lower the opacity of the layer as well if you wanted. Have Fun.

• Here We Shine!!
  by Alison Pearce

  In line with my resolve to try and keep a journal of my published work here, I would like to share with you my recent publication. My “Sc…

  In line with my resolve to try and keep a journal of my published work here, I would like to share with you my recent publication. My “Scar Tissue and a Bitter Serenade” – which some of you may have read here under the working title of “Find” has been publshed in The Shine Journal You can view it here I have had a long association with The Shine Journal and I cannot sing its praises highly enough, nor can I sing the praises of editor Pamela Tyree Griffin enough. A talented writer herself, Pamela has built Shine into one of the most inspirational ezines online right now. Please check out the amazing writing and art displayed there each month, you will not be disappointed! And don’t forget to check out the guidelines for submission. They are clear and easy to follow. Though this a non-paying market (at this time they can only afford to pay competition winners), it is a rewarding market to add to your CV.

• The Digital Darkroom
  by Alison Johnston

  We’ve added a new forum over at the Photography Critique and Advice group called The Digital Darkroom, you can find the group HERE...

  We’ve added a new forum over at the Photography Critique and Advice group called The Digital Darkroom, you can find the group HERE Everyone is welcome to join the group for some photography critique and now for some help with image editing software. Hope to see you all there Cheers, Alison

• Wow! Thank you Flash Fiction!
  by Alison Pearce

  Many many many thanks to the wonderful group Flash Fiction for featuring four of my stories! / T…

  Many many many thanks to the wonderful group Flash Fiction for featuring four of my stories! / They are; Fallen Hero / Witness for the Defence / In Search of Welcome and A Flock of Angels I also thank them for making me a featured writer :) I share the limelight with the incomparable Lawford Check his work out, he is a brilliant writer :)

• Thanks to Alison Johnston.
  by Gregoryno6

  Who directed my attention to this.

  Who directed my attention to this.

• 

  My Favourites From 2009
  by Alison Johnston

  My favourite images from 2009, they include both photography and digital designs.